Ernest Bergez's new album De Mòrt Viva draws on the traditional music of the French Massif Central region
“We are like a big curiosity cabinet,” declares Julien Courquin, founder and artistic director of the Nantes and Paris based organisation Murailles Music, speaking to Phil England in The Wire 446.
Beginning life as a non-profit booking agency in 2004, Murailles Music has since developed into a more expansive and ambitious organiser of events, as well as a label. Its latest project is the co-release of Sourdure’s De Mòrt Viva with fellow French labels Pagans and Les Disques Du Festival Permanent. “Ernest Bergez’s Sourdure has developed from a solo effort to one with fellow musicians,” writes Phil, “contributing to a rich and complex blend that draws on the traditional music of the French Massif Central region (Bergez sings in the Occitan language), Middle Eastern and Mediterranean forms, a wide range of textures and a modern studio production.”
Translating as “Our Crap”, “Nostra Foeira” is a “clownish poem cascading in wordplay and aphorism to vividly evoke situations where the individual self merges into a sense of communion with mankind,” says Bergez. “It’s a track down to the Carnival inside us, in our flesh, in our oldest memories. This is the ego dissolving into the Dance, the Flesh overtaking the Mind and soon the acknowledgment that we are now orphans, orphans of Carnival.”
Sourdure’s De Mòrt Viva is released on 2 April. Read Phil England’s Unlimited Editions piece about Murailles Music in The Wire 446, in print or online.
